


Wishes

by mortalitasi



Series: bones and violets [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Family, Friendship, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 15:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3494231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a few of the birthdays Grace Trevelyan has had, and a wish for many more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wishes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goatrocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goatrocket/gifts).



> i wrote this for bb grace's birthday which was like two days ago so it's late but here it is anyway!!

the good thing about getting old is that you do it  
only once.

…

 

_Plip. Plop._

  
There's not much to do when it's raining—except to watch the droplets trail down the glass of her window in rivulets, thick and thin, fast and slow, and that gets very boring after a few minutes. The courtyards below and beyond the frame of the window are shrouded in fog. It's a wonderful day to have a birthday, by any account. Adaline had made her favorite—custard cream cake studded with Antivan chocolate, decorated with seven pretty purple candles that she'd blown out in a single gasp. Mama had promised to be there, but there'd been no present and no mother. Little Grace is starting to expect the opposite of her mother's promises, always, a thing a child should never have to do.  
  
_When I grow up_ , she thinks to herself as she mindlessly traces patterns into the hem of her dress,  _I'll keep my promises to everyone. Especially on birthdays_ .  
  
“Make a wish,” Adaline had said to her, and she's sure something should have sprung to mind as soon as that was mentioned, but she couldn't think of anything she wanted—at least, nothing she wanted and knew was possible to have.  
  
_I wish..._  
  
She'd pretended to have finished the sentence in her head and done as Adaline expected her to. Goodbye, candles, she'd thought as their flame flickered under the wash of her breath. She turns from the window and sighs, looking at her room, with its high, arched ceiling, and its marvelous tiered Nevarran bed, the soft beige of the walls and the thick carpeting underfoot. It's a chamber any little girl would love, and she would too, if she did not spend so much time in here. Mama keeps saying they'll replenish her book supply, but it never happens, and so Grace is resigned to rereading the same tales over and over—she knows  _Andraste's Lay For the Children of the Chantry_ by heart.  
  
_I wonder what it's like to stand in the rain_ .

 

 

…

 

 

Adaline comes in long after she's doused her lights.  
  
Sleep escapes her, like it's been escaping her for the last few years. Earlier in the evening Ada had put a vase of fresh roses on her mantelpiece, and she'd reached out to brush the wonderful petals with her fingers—that had been enough. Ice had bled out from the point of contact, turning the flowers to crystal, and they'd stayed there, glittering, cold and dead and finished. She'd pulled her hand back when she realized the freeze was creeping down onto the vase. Mama would be angry if she broke it, if anything happened to it, and then with a sinking dread she'd thought— _I killed them_ .  _They're dead because of me_ .  
  
If she'd been a different girl, perhaps she'd have swept the vase and the shimmering evidence of her guilt aside, let them shatter on the ground, but she'd just crawled to her cushioned place by the windowsill, burying her face in her knees and trying to not focus on anything but the awareness of what she'd done.  
  
“My lady? Grace? ...Little bird?”  
  
She doesn't lift her head, just listens to the silence and the pause in Adaline's steps when she sees what must be the vase and the icy roses.  
  
“I brought you some of the cake,” Adaline murmurs as she comes to kneel before Grace, plate proffered. “You should eat something.”  
  
“I'm not hungry,” Grace says in a whisper as she tightens her hands against her arms.  
  
“You may not be, but...” Adaline's sentence trails off as her eyes focus on the ugly purpling thing blooming under the skin of Grace's wrist. She sets the plate aside gently, fork clinking, and very carefully brushes the loop of Grace's scalloped sleeve away, leaving the bruise beneath in plain sight. It looks more horrible in the dim light of the dying fire burning low in the hearth, and it makes Adaline's heart burn.  
  
“Don't look,” Grace says, shame coloring her voice. She pulls her sleeves down stubbornly and looks out the window, even though she can't see anything of the courtyard through the nightly mist. It always seems to be that way on her birthday.  
  
“I won't,” Adaline assures her, and crawls in beside Grace on the opposite end of the window-side seat. She takes up the plate again, and the fork. “But I  _will_ ask you to eat.”  
  
Grace frowns at her, pretty face creasing. She's growing so fast, Adaline thinks with some regret. Grace was always a lovely child—bright-faced, smiling, if you knew what to say to coax the happiness from her, curious, so very smart, and so very precious. She reaches out to nestle a hand in Grace's ridiculous mountain of dark curls, feeling the hair spring up against her palm. Adaline smooths it away from Grace's eyes—they'd been brown when she was born, but as the years pass their color continues to yellow. With her wild halo of hair and her golden gaze, Adaline's beloved Grace is looking more like a wolfling every day. She will be so beautiful.  
  
“You're going to whisk some young man's heart away one day, little bird,” Adaline says, pinching her charge's cheek. Grace blinks.  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“I'm right about these things, you know,” Adaline admonishes and then cuts a bite of cake free with the side of the fork. “Come now. Open up.”  
  
Grace pinches her mouth shut, cheeks dimpling. “No,” she mumbles through the press of her lips.  
  
“Grace...”  
  
“ _No_ .”  
  
“Must I do what we used to when you were little?” Adaline asks, and then lifts the fork as though it's taken flight. “Buzz, buzz, here comes the busy bee!”  
  
“Adaline, you can't be seriou—”  
  
“Buzz, buzz, buzz!”  
  
“ _Adaline—_ ”  
  
“Buzz,” Adaline says dryly, poking the tines of the fork to the pouty edge of Grace's lip. “Make way for the busy bee!”  
  
Grace sighs, and with no small amount of disdain, opens her mouth wide enough for Adaline to slip the cake in. It's wonderful—of course it is, Adaline is a tremendous cook, among other things. She can't think of anything that Adaline can't do, so different from Mother, who is always distant, closed away somewhere Grace can't reach; but Adaline is here, smiling, happy for her, darning clothes and making food and helping her rise in the morning when the sleep is clinging too well to her eyes.  
  
“Good,” Adaline remarks, satisfied. “Now another.”  
  
For whatever reason, the whole situation brings around a wave of searing tears. They drip from Grace's chin as she chews, and when she sniffs she can smell chocolate and custard and taste the salt of her weeping alongside the sweet velvet of the cake. Adaline smiles at her, sadly, and then leans in to press a loving kiss to Grace's brow. She hasn't been fed since she was six. She's insisted on eating on her own, every time. A proper lady is an independent lady, Mother had said once, and she'd tried—tried so hard to show Mother that she was everything the Trevelyan house needed. What it wanted.  
  
_I'll never be good enough._  
  
Adaline wipes the tears away with the bunched end of one sleeve, reddening the fair skin of Grace's cheek.  
  
“Happy birthday, my love.”  
  
Grace can only nod, still crying, vision blurring.  
  
She is eleven, and she is already too old.

 

 

…

 

 

Grace barely has time to catch the tiny package thrown at her.  
  
“What's this?” she asks, blinking down at the bundle of brown paper and string.  
  
The group decided to camp in an open clearing this afternoon, stopping for a short break before continuing. Grace has no problem walking for long distances, truth be told, but it's always nice to be able to take a breather and sit down and dip your toes in a cold stream or something. She's also hungry. And if the way her partners-on-the-road are tearing open their knapsacks in search for food is any indication, they are, too.  
  
“Just a little something,” the elf who'd thrown it at her says, a mischievous grin crooking his thin lips. Ynar is tall, for one of his kind, with an intelligent, weathered face patterned with faded vallaslin. No one asks him how he got them, or where he came from, and they don't bother him—he's a good man, skilled with a bow, and he always has a smile on reserve for Adaline. His blue eyes are watching her, sharp as ever, framed by the wispy escaped strands of his smartly-cut hair.  
  
“That doesn't really tell me anything,” Grace murmurs, and he laughs.  
  
“Then open it! Mythal, girl, are you waiting for an invitation?”  
  
She shrugs. “That would be nice,” she says, and then sets about tugging the string around the package loose.  
  
Though she's not looking up, she can tell that the rustling of the paper has attracted the attention of all sitting around the campfire—the sudden hush that falls over everyone is a telltale sign. The paper comes apart in her hands, and she's starting to question whether there's actually anything  _in_ it before a strange object drops out of the bundle and straight into her lap. The dark leather string of the necklace can barely be seen against her trousers, so she picks it up, her heart jumping when she sees the way the firelight catches on the surface of the charm hanging from the string. It—looks like... a crystal? But, no, it isn't. Not really. She stares down at the thing cupped in her palms, fascinated by the luster of it. At first glance, it seems to be an oblong gem, but the bright, white-blue veins running through it tell her it's nothing quite so simple.  
  
She intends to ask what it is, but all that comes out is a breathy “What...?”  
  
Ynar snickers. “I take it that means you like it?”  
  
“It's beautiful!” she exclaims, holding it up to her eye-level, barely registering the satisfied smiles of those gathered by the campfire. “Where did you get it?”  
  
It's Adaline who answers, from her seat on the edge of an upturned log they're using as a bench. “Rusty called in a favor, last town we were at—it was her idea.”  
  
Grace looks at Rusty, grateful, but the dwarf sitting cross-legged on the ground only has a cursory waggle of the fingers to offer as a response. Rusty doesn't talk much, and favors her war-maul more than conversation, though she has things to say when she thinks it's important to speak up. She's a pretty woman, almond-eyed and high-browed, with long twists of russet hair that she routinely keeps in braids, tucked in and curled close to the back of her neck. Grace remembers being told the bold brands across Rusty's cheeks were a sign of shame and uselessness in dwarven society—apparently, if you can't be an outcast by way of magic, the world will come up with creative, stupid reasons for why you can't do what others can. Grace doesn't know anything about where Rusty came from—and neither do the others—but no one blames her for leaving in the first place.  
  
She's preoccupied with staring at the carved markings on the charm when Rusty's voice takes her by surprise.  
  
“The symbol,” Rusty says, pointing at the stone. “It's a vitality rune. Should help when you're feeling tired.”  
  
“Happy sixteenth,” Ynar adds. The rest of the band echoes his words, and Grace has to press the back of a hand to her eyes when they begin to water.  
  
“Thank you!” Grace manages to say. She puts it on, pulling the string down over the puffy cloud of her hair, admiring the way her new necklace rests on the worn fabric of her loose bodice, before standing in one sudden movement.  
  
Rusty barely has time to react to Grace's arms being thrown around her neck.  
  
“Thank you, thank you.”  
  
Rusty awkwardly pats Grace on the back, as though the action is something she's never attempted.  
  
“From us to you,” Adaline says when Grace has pulled away. “No cake this year again, little bird. I'm sorry.”  
  
Grace laughs. “It's alright. This—this is the best birthday ever.”

 

 

…

 

 

The door to her chambers shuts with a groan of wood and a clank of metal. She helps it by leaning her back against it, sighing in relief when she realizes she's _finally_ gotten away from the well-wishers. She knew they knew that she knew that they knew it was her birthday today, but she never expected _this much attention_. The kitchens are going to be full of tarts for _days_ (not that Dorian will complain, he could probably mow through all of them on his own).

“No more gifts,” she declares. She has gotten more of them than any newly-twenty-two-year-old could know what to do with.

She makes her way up the stairs, yanking the hair tie from her ponytail—or  _trying_ to. She's still attempting to extricate the ribbon from her obstinate knotted curls at the moment she notices what's been left on her pillow. Grace approaches the bed, hair problems forgotten, and she can't help but smile at recognizing the blossoms of crystal grace. He always leaves some for her, always seems to have some on hand, though her stores from the Skyhold garden don't ever dip below their cataloged numbers. She takes the miniature bouquet in her hands, and only just achieves catching the note that falls from between the stems. It's just a scrap of paper, and the script on it is tiny, thoughtful, rounded, economic.  
  
_Not good with presents. Sorry. I hope you like it._  
  
Her smile grows wider, but falters when her fingers brush against the coolness at the center of the bouquet, held there by the blue ribbon the stems are tied together with. She slips the glass vial out from its binding carefully. It's infinitely lovely, more decorative than practical, with delicate frosted patterns of crystal grace around its fluted neck. Where in the world could he have gotten this from? And why—? And then it comes to her in a flash.  
  
“I've nothing to put the rosewater in,” she'd said to herself (or... apparently  _not_ to herself) the other day while arranging her beakers, fluffing her hair in annoyance and pulling at her face. The rosewater was—is—a bit of indulgence, really, she doesn't use it for anything except the occassional face-wash and scenting, and he'd...  
  
“Okay,” she says as she holds the vial and the flowers close, her grin growing. “Maybe just one more.”

 

 


End file.
